Kensington Elementary striving for a safer school

Friday

Mar 28, 2014 at 2:00 AM

KENSINGTON — A new real-time threat alert system is being tested at Kensington Elementary School that allows school staff to instantly notify police officers in their cruisers through a text message and communicate with them directly during a crisis.

Jason Schreiber

KENSINGTON — A new real-time threat alert system is being tested at Kensington Elementary School that allows school staff to instantly notify police officers in their cruisers through a text message and communicate with them directly during a crisis.

The school is the first in the state to pilot the Brandon-COPsync system, which is designed to improve communication with local law enforcement and reduce response times.

"The system will just enhance everything we're doing in the state when it comes to school safety. We've got a great 911 system in the state, and this will enhance that and it will enhance officer safety and enhance our time getting to the school to solve a problem that's going on," Kensington Police Chief Mike Sielicki said Thursday during a demonstration for area police and school personnel.

The system allows a school to send a message about a threatening incident to law enforcement on a laptop or other device.

The message sends in 15 seconds or less and immediately goes out to the five nearest police cruisers, no matter where they're from, using GPS. The message is also delivered simultaneously to the local dispatch center and 911 and can be sent to an officer's phone as a text message.

The police who receive the message on their own cruiser computers with the software installed will then be able to send a quick message through a chatting program and respond. The system will also bring up a map showing the location of the school and a layout of the school building.

Dispatchers would continue to receive the real-time messages with updated information from within the school.

If a police officer is responding and unable to text, Sielicki said the dispatcher would take over the live chat and relay it to police.

Sielicki said "live" information is often missing when police respond to a school for an incident.

"When we run into a building, we don't know what's going on. This, in an active shooting situation in a school, can give us that live information on a steady basis so we know what's going on in the school when we come in. We could have teachers chatting with us telling us that he's in our hallway," Sielicki said.

Sielicki said he hopes police departments across the state will participate in the program to make it more effective because the program will only work with the agencies that have installed the system.

"Having more of them online is going to make it a more powerful network because it gives you more officers who are able to respond to a threat location," said Brandon Flanagan, executive vice president of Brandon COPsync, based in Danvers, Mass.

Kensington didn't have to pay for the program because it's a pilot site.

Flanagan said he couldn't provide a cost figure for schools and police departments just yet, but he said it would be affordable.

Kensington Principal Barbara Switzer said she feels the system will be an effective method of communication beyond the traditional call to 911.

"I'm really grateful that we can have another way to contact the police to let them know that an incident is going on in our school. I think that if we do install this on all the laptops in the school, then I think anyone can spot something and then go over to click it and be able to then type in 'intruder coming in through the gym door' and know that it's going to go out to the closest five police and then it's going to start moving," she said.

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